Deck Guidelines
Swapping existing photos in a shape (rectangular or Room to Read abstract rounded shapes):
Adjusting photo placement in a shape (rectangular or Room to Read abstract rounded shapes):
Swapping full-slide background photos:
Please refrain from adding additional photos as too many images compete with the text on a slide!
Compress photos:
Room to Read nurtures foundational learning skills in children.
Founded in 2000 on the belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children,®
we envision a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality, where all children have room to read, learn and grow — creating lasting change. Our contextualized approach develops children’s literacy and life skills in a dignified and gender-equal way.
We are making the �impossible possible, through education.
Room to Read supports children in communities experiencing deep educational, gender and economic inequities, where investments in education accelerate positive change.
Room to Read has benefited 52 million children across 29 countries with literacy and life skills that promote gender equality.
52MM
children across 29 countries benefited
since 2000.
44.5MM
books distributed, including more than 5,058 original and adapted children’s titles published by Room to Read in 57 local languages.
47MM
million children supported through our literacy programming
4.1MM
girls supported through our gender equality programming
Our results
14.1MM
children actively benefited in 2024
Our Literacy Portfolio develops children’s literacy skills and nurtures a love of reading.
Our Gender Equality Portfolio supports all adolescents, particularly girls, to develop life skills that promote gender equality.
Across our programming, we partner with educators and local communities to implement innovative and dignified learning approaches for children — enabling them to pursue lifelong learning and make informed decisions.
Our programmatic�competencies
Creating content for curious minds
We craft high-quality, culturally rich literacy and life skills curricula, teaching and learning resources, and literature for children and adolescents in multiple languages and formats. �Designed to be developmentally appropriate and locally relevant, our materials meet the highest standards of book publishing and multimedia content production.
As a nonprofit book publisher, we are transforming the global children's book market, making it more inclusive, diverse and representative. ��We ensure children and adolescents have access to high-quality, local language literature — even in communities where for-profit publishers don’t print or distribute books. �By expanding children’s access to stories that reflect their experiences and inspire their dreams, we are nurturing generations of lifelong readers and learners.
We empower educators — including teachers, school administrators, librarians, non-formal learning facilitators and mentors — with vital coaching and professional development. Through our training, educators master effective instruction techniques and learn engaging reading activities.
They also learn how to manage libraries and facilitate learning beyond the classroom, benefiting entire communities.
Creating content for curious mind
Our approach embraces inclusive and sensitive teaching practices that nurture every child’s sense of self-worth, ensuring that learning spaces provide all children with the opportunity to thrive.
We know that how we teach is just as important as what we teach.
Shaping structures �for student success
We ensure children have the spaces, time and tools that make learning possible, including:
Our approach includes:
By shaping these essential structures, we are building the foundation for student success.
Tailoring tools for transformative literacy �and equality
We develop and utilize cutting-edge programmatic measurement tools that allow us to identify evidence of
We back our work with data, insights and measurable impact. Through rigorous research and validated methodologies, we ensure that our literacy and gender equality programming is effective, scalable and transformative — so that we can continue to meet the needs of children, educators, policy makers and communities. �
Our commitment to transparency and innovation improves learning outcomes while fostering dignity and self-worth in all children.
Our organizational�competencies
We know that Room to Read’s success is not just a function of what we do but how we do it.
A leading implementer
Our long-term focus on literacy and life skills development has resulted in a comprehensive design and approach to improving foundational learning outcomes for children that can be leveraged for scale.
Our community-based program implementation and scalability has proven successful in a range of geographies across the world.
Globally-informed, locally-led
Our decentralized approach to leadership and functional expertise enables us to support local stakeholders in creating their own solutions, while fostering efficiency and cross-learning in design and implementation across regions. �Our global presence ensures that our mission area is supported, with the influence of evidence, storytelling and resources from around the world.
Nearly 90% of our employees are located in the countries we serve.
Focused on dignity
From the language we use, to how we treat our partners and workforce, to the way children develop self-worth in our programming — kindness, respect and the joy of learning together come first.
Driven by data
Our commitment to research and evidence helps us narrow our priorities and investment decisions. We are diligent in ensuring we make informed choices about where and how we will work and about sharing what we have learned with others.
Flexibly funded
We retain significant control over how we allocate resources to maximize benefit to the children we serve and how we engage in public and private partnerships.
Building a foundation for learning:
Our Literacy Portfolio
Our Literacy Portfolio supports children as they develop literacy skills with a love
of reading.
Our Literacy Program is a core part of this portfolio, through which we
We combine the science of learning to read with the magic of loving to read to sustain children’s reading skills development.
Learning how to read and write
Globally, over the last five years, Grade 2 children in Room to Read schools read on average more than twice as many correct words per minute and correctly answer twice as many comprehension questions, compared to students in comparison schools.
Few organizations can demonstrate this level of improvement, especially among diverse communities around the world.
Building a love for reading
We offer the only global program with a focus on inspiring children to become life-long readers — through regular reading, a child continually practices and improves their reading skills, while gaining opportunities to learn about a range of topics, including climate change, peace and equality, and different cultures.
In 2023, children in Room to Read programs checked out an average of 13.7 books per student across all grades.
Decoding language
Decodable texts use words
that only contain letters that have already been learned.
Students are able to decode, or sound out, all of the words in the text.
Is this text decodable?
If you know the letters
a, i, s, t, and m…
Can you decode:
Sam sits.
A cat sits.
Is this text decodable?
If you know the letters
a, i, o, s, t, m, b, g, f, c, h, n...
Can you decode:
Sam said, “Come here, cat!”
A big fat cat sat on a mat.
Decoding a new alphabet
Do you remember the letters?
Read simple words
Why is decodable text important?
Decodable text:
Removing barriers to education:
Our Gender Equality Portfolio �
Our Gender Equality Portfolio helps all adolescents, particularly girls, develop life skills that promote gender equality.
Within this portfolio, our Girls’ Education Program supports adolescent girls through
Changing gender perceptions
How do we know we’re changing adolescents' perceptions of gender? We look at the data.
Let’s take the findings from our Life Skills for Equality Project in Cambodia as an example. After the first two years of the pilot project, which benefits girls and boys, our endline evaluations — both quantitative and qualitative — confirmed that life skills education is essential in shaping how adolescents think about their futures, their relationships and their views on gender norms.
Here is just a snippet of what we’ve learned:
Girls expressed greater confidence in speaking up, approaching teachers with questions and leading peer discussions.
Girls reported an increase in their ideal marriage age to 25.57 years, and boys to 26.05 years, marking a change from baseline data, where girls reported the ideal age to marry was 24.6 and boys reported 24.7.
Boys highlighted improvements in anger management, with many noting the use of communication, rather than aggression, to solve problems.
Both boys and girls shared that they had learned to support one another — a crucial step toward breaking cycles of inequality.
We’ve developed the delivery of our life skills content and curriculum through a variety of media channels.
Our multimedia storytelling initiative, She Creates Change, supports adolescents of all genders with content that equips and inspires them to create positive change in their lives — delivering curriculum aligned with stories presented through books, audio stories and film.
At shecreateschange.org, we’ve made our She Creates Change films, in various languages and lengths, accessible to educators, parents, students, partners, volunteers and event organizers around the world — helping us reach all adolescent girls with life skills that promote gender equality. Lesson plans, teaching resources and abundant supplemental content are all available to download for free with a simple click. �
Why education?
With so many important causes in the world, we know that choosing where to put your [dollars, rupees, pounds, euros] is a significant decision. Allow us to make the case for education:
1. Education is a human right that millions of children are denied. | 2. Illiteracy costs the global economy over US$1 trillion each year. | 3. Through education, young people gain skills to help solve the world’s toughest problems —poverty, disease and environmental degradation. | 4. Girls who stay in school are more likely to marry later, be healthier, ensure their children gain an education, and earn more income. | 5. Societies with fewer gender gaps in education are more prosperous, healthier and democratic. |
Quality education is an inherent human right. And yet more than 773 million people cannot read; two-thirds of these individuals are women and girls.
Among 10-year-olds living in low and middle-income countries, seven out of 10 cannot read and understand a simple text and are considered to be living in learning poverty.
Approximately 251 million of the world’s children and youth are not in school.
Without action, current education systems will continue to deny the fundamental right to quality education for millions of children for decades to come.
Why ?
When you support Room to Read, you are:
1. Helping communities around the world that experience deep educational, gender and economic inequities, where the need is most urgent. | 2. Bolstering strong partnerships with governments, NGOs, book publishers and others to accelerate learning outcomes and create long-term systemic change. | 3. Addressing both access to and quality of education. | 4. Backing programming that can be adapted for any community or context to help all children develop strong reading skills and habits. | 5. Ensuring all adolescents, particularly girls, cultivate life skills that promote gender equality, helping them navigate economic and social barriers to education. |
A valued partner of choice
Our programming goes further as we partner with governments and other organizations.
Room to Read is often one — if not the only — NGO invited by governments to join advisory committees to inform nationwide curriculum development, gender-aware approaches and programs, and school library standards.
Our approaches have been integrated into national curricula and education strategies, reaching schools throughout entire countries, and benefiting generations of children.
OSYC quotes
“Our partnership with Room to Read has significantly contributed to students' learning. It has fostered habits and improved students' reading abilities, self-awareness, communication, critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making skills. This has positively impacted academic performance, reduced student dropout rates, and increased the completion of secondary education.
– Pav Sothy, Director of the Department of Education, Youth, and Sports of Prey Veng Province, Cambodia
“Room to Read maintains a strong collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Sports in Laos, with its programs closely aligned to national education goals. The organization's contributions are recognized as vital for advancing education for all children.”
– Vongsinh Sayavong, Deputy Director-General, Department of International Cooperation, Ministry of Education and Sports, Laos
A globally trusted and recognized brand
A world of educated children
starts with you
Invest with confidence
For every US$1 donated to Room to Read, 85 cents goes to our programs. We are proud to have earned 18 four-star ratings from Charity Navigator. �
By the end of 2025, we will have invested more than US$1 billion into improving foundational learning for children across the world.
Give Monthly
Help us benefit more children, more quickly.
In honor of our 25th anniversary, new monthly donations will be MATCHED for the first 12 months by Room to Read's regional board members.
How your monthly donation will transform lives:
$10/month Provides 10 high-quality, local language books each month
$25/month Supports 6 students in our Literacy Program each month
30/month Keeps a girl in school each month with ongoing support in our Girls' Education Program
By providing steady funding we can count on, you maximize your impact by supporting communities where the need for quality education is most urgent.
As a monthly donor, you:
Join a community
Stay informed through optional monthly newsletters and join forces with other compassionate people who are creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality.
Stay in control
Enjoy the convenience of automatic payments while maintaining total control over your giving - change or cancel anytime.
Walk the walk
End each day proud that you're acting on your belief that every child deserves a quality and dignified education.
Partner with us
A partnership with Room to Read will blend your organization’s goals with our programmatic objectives. Our collaboration will demonstrate your company’s values and social responsibility to stakeholders.
In fact, companies that commit to philanthropy enjoy higher employee morale, a stronger public image and stronger customer loyalty. Institutional support is critical to our success, so we help our partners across the globe reach business objectives, while supporting Room to Read’s mission.
Create a cause marketing campaign
Cause marketing campaigns create a mutually beneficial partnership through the donation of a portion of proceeds from your sales. This model is easily sustainable — as your company grows, so does your social impact. Creative promotions get consumers excited to purchase products that give back and help to create and enhance brand loyalty.
Partner benefits
Room to Read acknowledges your company’s investments in ways that best fit your interests and strategic goals.
Benefits include*:
Start a fundraiser.
It all starts with an idea. Our supporters have dedicated birthdays and weddings, climbed mountains, sold lemonade and more, all in the name of education.
Volunteer.
Join a worldwide network of passionate people working together to eradicate global illiteracy and gender inequality in education, right from your own community.
Stay informed.
Get the latest updates delivered right to your inbox. Read about incredible student transformations and enlightening insights on global education.
Support
Get in touch
Name Here
first.last@roomtoread.org
+## ##############
World Change Starts with Educated Children®